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Microsoft quietly announced this week that the next version of System Center Configuration Manager has hit its first beta milestone and has begun shipping to testers.

Dubbed "v.Next," Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) upcoming refresh of Configuration Manager focuses on what the company refers to as the "three pillars" of the update, according to a post on the System Center Team Blog by Jeff Wettlaufer, senior technical product manager for System Center.

"System Center Configuration Manager v.Next is uniquely positioned to provide for powerful and flexible user-centric client management, allowing users to be able to seamlessly access their data from virtually anywhere, across multiple device types while providing IT with unified management tools and centralized control," he added.

Configuration Manager is part of Microsoft's System Center management suite and is used to ease the deployment, upgrading, and management of desktop client and server operating systems and applications, along with handling patch management and system inventorying, according to company statements.

User-centric additions coming in v.Next include the ability for administrators to focus on the user's intent as well as a new application management model to help "capture" administrators' intent as well. The additions also include a "self-service portal" for end-users to access software themselves.

In a move to simplify management infrastructure and lower administrative overhead, v.Next adds "new role-based administration and user experiences" as well as "automated content distribution," and a "redesigned" core infrastructure, which provides increased scalability.

Finally, under the rubric of simplifying client management, v.Next adds "automated remediation" for both compliance and client health, Wettlaufer continued.

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